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The Houghton County Board of Commissioners received an audit report of their budget by Rukkila, Negro and Associates’ Debbie Bradford at their regular monthly meeting on Tuesday.
They gave the county a modified opinion which means it was a clean report.
The auditor also indicated that there were no overages in the budget, which are prohibited by state law.
Bradford also noted that the county received $6.6 million in federal awards that were then used in the county.
The board also received its county equalization report by County Equalization Director John Partanen.
According to the report, the state equalized value this year is $1,115,000,000. The county increased its assessed value by $13,500,000, and the taxable value is $852 million which is an increase of $11,805,000.
In Houghton County there are nearly 30,000 parcels of property.
In other business, the board of commissioners voted to change the title of County Controller Eric Forsberg to County Administrator.
The administrator’s duties include overseeing non-elected department heads such as building, equalization, emergency measures, IT and maintenance department, along with the county transfer station, marina and airport.
The reasoning was that Forsberg has already been handling these responsibilities and the new title would simply give him the authority to do so.
Commissioner Scott Ala, who was the only board member to vote against the measure, said the county should look into developing a performance-based contract for the administrator’s position before creating the title.
The board approved a three year contract with the Houghton County Work Camp which includes pay increases of 1.25 percent, 1.75 percent and 2 percent.
Management received a concession on who can be called in during unscheduled sick or vacation time.
Petitions concerning the Otter Lake Dam were submitted to the county board on February 10th of this year.
The board decided at that time to defer the matter to the dam committee for review.
The dam committee met on February 27th and reviewed the county attorney’s legal opinion who determined the petitions were invalid as written.
The statute required the county board to take action so they declared the petitions invalid to make it official.
The next step is for residents to submit a ballot petition regarding the Otter Lake Dam.
